1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a silver halide color photosensitive material capable of realizing an extremely high image quality excelling in graininess and in bright acuity.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, photosensitive materials of high photographic speed are placed on the market in quick succession in accordance with the progress of technology relating to photosensitive materials for photographing. Accordingly, the photographed areas are expanding to night scenes, dark indoor space, etc.
However, with respect to such photosensitive materials of high photographic speed, it is difficult to obtain satisfactory image quality when the print size is large. For example, in professional photographic fields such as those in business, it is highly important to realize excellent graininess for enhancing the print quality. On the market of such fields, the ratio of handling of large-size prints is high, and from this viewpoint as well, graininess is critically important.
Further, the magnification ratio at printing must be high for preparing large-size prints, so that excellent bright acuity in broad frequency domain is simultaneously important.
Various techniques for sensitivity enhancement have been studied (see, for example, Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. (hereinafter referred to as JP-A-) 2003-156823 and JP-A-2000-194085). These however on their own cannot attain excellent graininess.
Graininess improvement to a certain level can be achieved by combining the technology for sensitivity enhancement with techniques involving the use of coupler of low activity, use of DIR compound, reduction of the dimension of silver halide grains, etc. However, the use of couplers of low activity in large amounts is attended by harmful effects, such as strong influence of variations of processing solution composition. The use of DIR compounds leads to a change of the level of interlayer effect, making compatibility with color reproduction difficult. The reduction of the dimension of silver halide grains leads to an intensification of light scattering, making it difficult to attain an enhancement of image quality involving bright acuity.
On the other hand, improvement of bright acuity to a certain level can be achieved by combining the technology for sensitivity enhancement with irradiation neutralizing dyes. However, improvement of graininess cannot be attained thereby.